


The only hell I'm going to

by Finnie



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Dysfunctional Relationships, Love/Hate, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 01:21:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12853668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Finnie/pseuds/Finnie
Summary: The doctor and the master's nightsOrHow not to not love a monster





	The only hell I'm going to

_honey just put your_

_sweet lips on my lips_

_we could just kiss_

_like real people do_

* * *

 

 

the prologue:

the first time they fuck after centuries of separation is horrible. their new bodies aren't made for each other, and the doctor doesn't seem to want to touch the master more then necessary, while the master doesn't seem to want to kiss him and all in all they barely touch each other. the doctor is afraid to press against the master's skin because he's half sure that after a moment it'll sizzle and burn him, like when you press your thumb against a lit matchstick. 

it always begins with a fight. there are gunshots fired. there are people killed. some things don't change with time: whenever the doctor and the master clash, innocent people fall. the doctor doesn't ask,  _did you cook up all this hell just to see me?_ the master doesn't answer.

it ends with a flicker and not a bang. before the morning,  the master is always gone,  slips away like a shadow. sometime the doctor can still see where he had been laying, sprawled on the grayish sheets, just out of reach.

there's a bit of empty space behind the doctor's ribs that belongs to the master. there's nothing there,  but that nothing is his alone.

.

how it happens:

it's not hard to slowly fight your way into your enemy's open arms. fighting your way into his arms, whispering his name while your fingers are interlocked on the unused bed. it's as easy as breathing.

.

more clearly:

it _always_ begins with a fight. theirs is a thinly veiled love,  but the veil is made of violence.

through their next couple of lives,  it works like this: the doctor suspects the master of something terrible and that's why he pursues him. the plan is a bad one.

the plan:

• find the master  
• talk  
• scare him  
• lock him somewhere you won't have to look at him

what actually happens:

• the master finds him  
• the doctor throws a punch at his jaw,  but the master catches him in a mock dance pose,  his arm wrapped just a bit too tight around the doctor's waist.  the doctor hooks his leg around the master's and throws him off balance. they both fall,  and the master grins at him devilishly as he's pinned to the floor.  
3\. sometime during step two the master's worked his knee between the doctor's legs.  
4\. the doctor kisses him like he's judging him.

a stupid thing to do:

imply that this means nothing to you;  that you're  over a love affair from your youth. insinuate that he's a pitiful,  gross thing,  a murderer,  a liar.

the stupidest thing to say:

ask him if his skin would burn you if you touched it.

if you ask the master about fire,  you'll burn.

.

the ugly bits:

the master has quite forgotten how to kiss but the doctor chooses not to notice. his mouth lingers in the corner of the doctor's and his hands are fumbling at the buttons of the doctor's shirt,  and it's like that for months on end until the doctor stops him with a hand to master's cold, cold mouth.

and the master's mask of cruelty falls a bit as he holds the doctor's face in his hands.

.

Teaching a monster how to kiss:

it's a bad idea.

if you do that, you're going to start, on some primal and weird level, falling back in love with the monster (as if you already weren't)

never love a monster.

.

oddities:

decades later,  the master kisses him badly, either chastely or bruisingly, and then they fall asleep in a tangle in one of the tardis bedrooms that's never been used before and never will be again. and the doctor reaches inside that empty space in his chest and wonders wether it would feel better if they stopped fighting each other.

truthfully,  he can't picture it happening. it's a two way road with the master;  you can't get love without the hate.

.

not loving an evil person:

It's not like the doctor doesn't know what the master's done. it's not like that at all. he knows, that's the whole thing. on the nights they fuck they don't talk about it, don't say anything that might be an accusation,  which means they don't say much at all.

the first dozen times the doctor is alert. he waits for the master to slip and tell him that it was him who burned half the planet to the ground,  that he hates everything the doctor stands for. he doesn't,  and instead he presses a kiss to the doctor's throat. one flick of the knife the doctor knows he has hidden in his sleeve and he'd be dead.

there's something in wondering if your lover is going to murder you.

.

a secret:

 _I would break time for you,_ the master whispers one night into the doctor's ear. it's a single word in gallifreyan,  a secretive,  forbidden,  dirty word. it means _if time took you from me,  I'd unleash hell to get you back._ it implies the knowledge to do so,  being prepared to fracture the universe' spine. it's not a romantic thing to say,  and it makes the doctor sad.

.

hallowness:

during the war,  every night is long,  and seconds are like aeons.

the master never once tells him that he loves him before a battle. they kill automatically,  without flinching, and something in the doctor is chipping away bit by bit,  but from the inside out.

he pulls the trigger and burns the entire dirty world down. deep inside,  he knows that he's burned the master too. he wonders if the master felt it was him,  wonders if he smiled.

.

rebirth:

the master,  _very much alive,_ appears out of nowhere,  a wrong thing battered and blurred at the edges. he unleashes all his despair on earth,  tramples everything to the ground,  and the doctor stares at the broken bits, unsure what to do.

.

stick to the _plan,_ man!

.

the new master leans down to plant a chaste kiss on the doctor's eyebrow, and the doctor wonders if he bothers to do this when he fucks his wife. the doctor can see the master in the shape of his eyes,  in the curve of his mouth, but something is so, so wrong.

you whimper in your sleep,  he'd like to tell him, and i wish i didn't know that. I wish I knew what you hear when you drum your fingers on my ribcage. I wish I could release you from it.

leave the humanity alone and come with me, he tells him instead.

he wonders if he told him the other thing,  he'd be dead now.

.

a twist:

the master doesn't really fuck him like he hates him. the doctor had wanted that,  he thinks,  to be fucked like a horrible thing on a downward spiral. the master fucks him like he hates himself,  but he's only trying to make it look like it's the other way round. like the doctor can't see it.

he always can tell when the master is lying.

"i hate you," the master lies into his ear afterwards.

"I hate to hate you," replies the doctor,  because gallifreyan doesn't have a word for love.

"I hate this." the master insists.

"I hate that we both hate it."

a long pause.

"I really do," the doctor argues.

.

futile hopes:

maybe,  finally, one day the master will love him enough to end this hell. the doctor will forgive him, he will. he would,  always,  in the end of days,  even if stars damned him.

in the end the master chooses to die,  and the doctor wants to rip him to pieces for it. it's now how any of this is supposed to work,  he thinks. loving enough to let go is a lie. it's not how love works. love is a hand closed around your throat.

.

a thing the doctor wishes he hadn't said one morning when the master forgot to kick him out of his bedroom:

"can you hold me tighter?"

"if I hold you tighter I'll suffocate you."

"that's alright."

.

a full and coherent explanation:

the master returns yet again,  and this time he doesn't want to touch the doctor. he doesn't even really want to look at him.

then he's gone yet again,  but before that he says five words: get out of the way,  and he kills rassilon and not the doctor,  and it's something he'll treasure forever.

.

sometimes the doctor wonders if time lords can even love at all. if emotions are something so different,  so unimaginable,  and he's just clinging to this make-believe fantasy,  just pretending to love that ever disappearing disaster.

if there's kinder love, it's hidden from the doctor. he's not sure he wants it.

.

horror, terror, other oddities:

he finds her again, and there's blood and betrayal and fire.

that night,  the master was stiller than the doctor ever remembered her being. they don't even get to the taking their clothes off bit. the master just sits at the foot of the bed,  her knees pulled to her chest,  and the doctor buries his face into her shoulder. she is quiet and small. the doctor can't imagine what she must be thinking about, but it must be very evil.

the doctor thinks about why she scheduled that disaster with the cybermen.

he thinks about how she still feels the same, after all those lives and deaths, like bones, and like fire, and like love and betrayal and absolution before death. it's what she'll always feel like.

.

lies:

in the vault, they have an idea,  both at the same time,  and yet each of them thinks of it as their own.

the doctor has a temporary memory circuit in his clenched fist. she holds two fingers to the activation button, wary.

"four hours." he says.

"and we won't remember that any of it happened?" she closes her eyes and looks strangely uncertain, vulnerable even. "the end of time. the valiant. the enmity of ages. the war? "

"not until the morning." the doctor assures her.

she nods.

to forget.

_to have one peaceful night._

they press the button together.  
.

it is disgusting how well they fit together once every inch of them is rewritten.

.

that night they fuck clumsily for the first time since the academy,  the doctor remembering all the things he used to think were beautiful about the master. how her eyes tilt while she schemes and the wicked quirk of the lip that bares her canines a bit.

the master is never this fumbling with him. she bends him over a piano and his knees play an off-tune melody as they ram into the keys. in the dead of night,  she calls him theta sigma and he calls her koschei and they don't correct each other because it feels real.

the doctor is the one who says the horrible words first,  soft and in an earth language and breathy into her chest,  and later when the effects of the memory circuit are gone and he has his head buried into the pillow, afraid to look her in the eye,  he thinks that maybe they both meant it.

even in the morning he can remember how she kissed him,  far too softly, far too well, like they could still save each other.

.

_I love you._

later the doctor wonders if the memory alteration had been just an excuse not to feel ashamed,  if only just one time.

.

reality:

in the light of his previous experiences,  the doctor tells himself that it was probably just the circuit. but it's too late. the moment is over, but somewhere it keeps existing, put into a loop forever.

through all the long years that follow,  and after the day with the two masters,  and after she supposedly dies yet again,  it plays in the doctor's head a million times over.

.

_i l o v e y o u i love you i love you i love you i loveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyoui'vealwayslovedyouiloveyousomuch-_

.

the epilogue:

the doctor doesn't dream for a second that the master is really gone. they always return,  a soft artist of dying and coming back to life.

but now, in the dark and everlasting vastness of space and long after all the bad versions have gone, the doctor wonders how it would sound if the master said it now, off some new lips, some new hands in dark gloves wrapped around her waist. wonders if when the master comes back, they would remember, too.

.

the master never comes back. the doctor imagines it over and over. 

**Author's Note:**

> The layout of this is inspired by a fic I read ages ago and forgot the name asdfgjj


End file.
